All posts tagged minimum wage

While restaurant operators across the country are grappling with higher local minimum wage rates or bracing themselves for a possible boost in the federal minimum wage, some restaurateurs have voluntarily lifted employee wages.

Punch Neapolitan Pizza, an 8-unit chain in Minneapolis, in December raised the starting wage of its employees to $10 an hour from $7.50–a move that received a shout-out from President Barack Obama during his State of the Union speech in January.

“We did it for old-fashioned capitalistic reasons. We wanted to beat the competition,” said co-owner John Puckett. “We want to offer high quality service, and we needed to be north of the minimum wage to attract and keep the type of people we think our business needs. We have stacks of applications now from people wanting to work for us.”

A day of co-ordinated strikes targeting the fast food industry in cities across America, reports the AFP:

Thousands of workers at McDonald’s and other fast food outlets across the United States went on strike Thursday in a growing movement for higher wages in the industry.

Workers in 50 cities joined the strike to fight for $15 an hour wages — double what most currently earn — and the right to form a union without retaliation, organizers said.

In a statement organizers said it would be the largest-ever strike to hit the $200 billion fast-food industry.

The protest movement first began in New York last November with a strike by 200 workers but quickly spread across the country with strikes in July taking place in Chicago, Detroit, Flint, Kansas City, Milwaukee and St Louis.

On Thursday organizers said the strike will hit about 1,000 major fast-food restaurants, including Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC.

“Hold the burgers, hold the fries, make worker wages supersize!” read a tweet from Fight for 15, a workers organizing committee.

It’s not clear how many workers took part in the strikes and protests — we are looking around for more estimates. But pictures published online showed relatively small crowds forming, ranging from the tens to the low hundreds.

Tweets from the protests were tagged with #fightfor15, a reference to the $15 an hour restaurant workers say they should be paid. Many showed McDonald’s, the country’s biggest restaurant chain, was a major target.

The original video pointing out the flaws in the McDonald’s guide — including assuming its staff work a second job, or spend just $20/month on health insurance — has racked up more than 85,000 views on YouTube, and inspired dozens of follow-up articles. Here it is, put out by Low Pay Is Not Okay, a workers’ rights group.

The nation’s largest restaurant chain by sales, McDonald’s often paves the way for industry standards in the food business — like with its Happy Meals, Dollar Menu and relatively new McCafes. If it were to raise its hourly pay, as many fast-food workers have been protesting for, it would likely force others to follow.

As activists fight to form a union for fast-food workers and demand $15-an-hour wages, McDonald’s has found itself in the hot seat for the past few months.